


a hazy shade of winter

by paperiuni



Series: Unwritten: Codas & Interludes [10]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode Related: s03e18 The Beast Within, Experimental Style, Families of Choice, Gen, Hopeful Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 22:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18433577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: The thing about deals with demons is that they are the easy path. A steep price paid for a quick result.Magnus takes the slow road. He never has to walk it alone.





	a hazy shade of winter

**Author's Note:**

> Twitter told me I should post this here.
> 
> If I had the time I'd make this a 50,000 word epic, but for now, here's a quick bittersweet story-essay on how to solve the riddle of the magicless warlock.

First of all, Alec comes to Magnus and says, _What if we contact your father_.

First of all, hollow and rattled and cracked, Magnus says, _No. My father will have nothing more to do with this. No more ways for him to fuck us over. There has to be another way._

Setting out, they know it's going to be a slow, arduous way. The thing about deals with demons is that they are the easy path. A steep price paid for a quick result.

Magnus finds a new place and they move in together. It’s tolerably close to the Institute for Alec to work his ridiculous hours.

Then, they investigate their options. Magnus disappears down a rift of book hunts and library visits and phone calls. That’s on the good days. Those when he can muster himself and see the people and do the work.

Then there are the days he loses to a fog of apathy, to staring at walls and drinking too much. To sleeping too much or not enough. To the days when the world is grey and flat and meaningless, and everyone he loves is talking through a wall of glass and nothing connects.

It's Izzy who convinces Magnus to take his first client after the first, worst nadir is over.

She needs help with a conundrum, a new demon mutation that’s not new at all, but was last recorded centuries ago. In a bout of slight mania, Magnus goes through his entire room of research journals and finds his own notes from 1737. They solve the case.

She pays him double the standard consultation fee and tells him that he should consider getting back to it.

He and Alec endure. They may sleep in separate beds or in separate buildings. Magnus may seek refuge with Catarina or in Ragnor's old safe houses—or one of his own—or with Dot, who is living incognito in a remote villa in Italy, keeping cats and growing tomatoes.

In the final tally, he still has dozens of friends who are entirely uncowed by Lorenzo's petty attempts to cut Magnus off from his community.

He loses friends, too. To pity, to disdain. Some wonder how much of a warlock he ever was to give it all up for some nephilim boy. Some of them can’t bear to look at him—he's too broken, frail, mortal, impossible. Some see him as of no further use.

Others spend hours and days in discussion with him. Smuggle books out of the Spiral Labyrinth and other warlock troves for him. Loop through every hole to make sure no possibility is missed.

With Alec, there are arguments, and simmering resentment, and the one blow-out fight where Magnus screams that he should talk to his father after all, for all the good Alec’s doing to him.

After that, they don't speak for two months. Alec moves back to the Institute. Magnus goes to Morocco without warning and is only found when Alec alerts Catarina in a panic and she locates him via the old standing tracking charm she set up for emergencies. Magnus used to have a like spell on her, before.

It grinds on Cat, too, this gradual loss of a friend who is closer than blood, who still understands her from a glance but is no longer for _always_.

Not even warlocks truly live forever. But they’re both in the middle of their first millennium. She thought they’d have centuries before apathy and inertia caught up to them. They were fighting it together.

Still, every week, she calls him. She brings Madzie over, when Magnus has the energy. Sometimes she brings a bottle of wine, when he doesn’t.

Completely independent of each other, Raphael and Maryse try to hold Magnus up. They both understand, if not the utter loss, then the devastating nature of change wrought on your core self. They add their voices to the persistent refrain of everyone around him. _Let us love you. Let us see you when you can't._

Life goes on.

(Without Luke, Raphael _or_ Magnus, the Downworld cabinet peters out, but when Maia begins building a new pack for Brooklyn, Alec goes to the Hunter’s Moon and asks, _How can I help?_

She tells him, of course, that wolf business is for wolves, but if he wants to come by and keep her in the loop on the Shadowhunter side, she won't throw him out. He puts his patrols on the lookout for new wolves. Any freshly turned wolves are to be calmed and called in. No killing, on pain of kissing your career in the New York Institute an instant goodbye.

That is another story.

It is the story of how Maia and Alec accidentally win each other’s respect and then friendship. How they wrangle Shadow World politics together. How Simon ends up throwing his Daylighter cred behind Maia on some issue affecting both werewolves and vampires. How Alec finds his own parabatai backing Maia over him because he’s being dumb and Shadowhunter-y and clearly the issue at hand needs to change. But it happens in the margins of this one.)

Maryse never tells Magnus Alec was going to propose. Neither does Jace.

Alec never mentions the words _grow old together_. He refuses the possibility that there may be no solution to Magnus's condition. He's still the Head of the Institute and he does his work, but finding help for Magnus becomes his calling. If he ends up doubling the Institute research acquisitions and diverting all extra funds to the library, well, that’s a side effect. Izzy doesn’t talk about it. She and her research team also reap the benefits.

Alec throws himself into saving Magnus, but if Magnus is his highest priority, beyond loving him, it means respecting him. Hearing him. Meeting him as himself, not as a cause to fight for.

The lesson of listening is still the hardest. For both of them.

It’s too easy for Magnus to imagine Alec is only suffering him, humouring him. To look at Alec and think he could do better and easier than a has-been warlock—even when Alec looks back and sees only someone wise, generous, valiant and kind. Someone his heart chose.

Alec doesn’t know how to love people for their parts. He never put a worth on Magnus’s magic. The only thing he can love is all of Magnus, the indelible presence that is him.

They break each other a few times over the push and pull of _why are you still here_ and _how long do you think you can do this_. There are tears and shouting and messy make-up sex. They pick up the pieces and see how they fit this time. Eventually they remember that when grand gestures are impossible, small moments will sustain you.

There is still room for the occasional grand gesture. They both have a flair for the dramatic.

Slowly, slowly, Magnus finds light in his days. The laughter of friends. The constancy of his chosen family. He burrows back into Alec's warmth in the bed when they can sleep in, breathes him in, and is happy. Maryse calls about a new book she got through a contact. Izzy needs an opinion on a fashion item or an interesting demon part. He goes on long, largely silent walks in the sun with Raphael. Messages come in from those people he's still been able to help, with nothing but his wits and his knowledge. There are changes for the better in the Shadow World of New York. The small hooks other people cast tangle him gently into the net of life.

Magnus finds the Lightwood ring quite by accident. It doesn't take him many moments to understands its significance. He almost puts it back where he found it without a word, but he and Alec only ever got to where they are by talking.

So, in a soft moment between them, he asks.

Alec goes quiet. He still can’t lie worth a damn, and the memory of his aborted proposal stings to this day. It smarts that he was so blind to Magnus's pain, so focused on fixing the problem that he didn’t pause to think if it was the right solution, if their needs and desires were in any way in alignment. (They were not. That was the tragedy.)

Finally Alec says, _Yeah, it is what you think it is. It wasn't the time. I loved you, but I wasn’t seeing_ you _._

Magnus closes his eyes, takes that in, and says only, _Ask me_.

And Alec goes to his knees on the rug in the living room and asks him. _Marry me. If you'll have me like this, I’m yours_. In this case, _like this_ means: the way they are right then, knocked about by their impossible circumstances, tired and triumphant, still working through everything.

(Magnus doesn’t even let Alec up from that rug for a few hours. They drop covert allusions to that just-got-engaged sex for years to come, but there are never details. Everyone hates them for it.)

They do, this time, get married.

And—either Magnus gets his magic back or he doesn't. Either Alec will be his last love or he won’t.

But Magnus finds _himself_ again, in bits and pieces. He knows, beyond question, that he is loved for himself. Due to the work he's done and others have done with him, he leaves a legacy of safety and support and mysteries unravelled, that will help countless people after him.

It is, in either case, a life well lived.


End file.
